~ …give that you may live, for to withhold is to perish. (Adapted from Kahlil Gibran)

Why iPad? It IS the Arrow. #txtia12

This morning, as I rushed out of my hotel room, I was priding myself on traveling light. Sure, I had a backpack for clothes and other stuff, a light iPad bag that holds all the power cords, iPod Touch and it’s respective cables. I was already parking at the Conference Center, 15 minutes away from my hotel where I’d left the key on the table by way of checking out, when I realized I’d left my hefty, leather laptop bag. What a pain.

As I reflected on the sin of pride–no easy matter as the tie choked my neck and I sped down the highway, hoping I wasn’t breaking the speed limit–it occurred to me that if I’d left my laptop bag at home, I wouldn’t be making this trip less than an hour before my first presentation. It occurred to me that the iPad came through today for my presentations, and I really didn’t need my laptop whatsoever. This is the same Macbook purchased in 2007 that travelled to New Zealand with me, and I’ve used for every keynote since people thought I was worth listening to (at least once).

Looking at my slide show, I found this slide below to be kind of funny. The question that everyone is asking is “Why iPad?” Why should we spend twice as much on a device that doesn’t play well in the K-12 environment? The why doesn’t matter. It’s like explaining to a two year old that the toy they want isn’t as good as the one that you think they should have. Poverty of spirit, perhaps, or meanness. Why iPad? That’s a question some folks have an easy answer to. Others will have to struggle with it. Either way, what’s possible with an iPad gets easier to accomplish every day…as one of my colleagues put it, “It’s not the arrow, it’s the Indian.” (with apologies to Native Americans for Lee Trevino’s quote).